Early Modern China and Northeast Asia

Evelyn S. Rawski is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. She received a PhD in History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard University, Massachusetts in 1968. A Guggenheim Fellow in 1990, she served as president of the Association for Asian Studies from 1995-6. She is the author of Agricultural Change and the Peasant Economy of South China (1972), Education and Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China (1979), and The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (1998).

• Acknowledgements; Note on transcription and other conventions; Introduction; Part I. China in Regional and World History: 1. The northeast frontier in Chinese history; 2. Transformations in early modern northeast Asia; Part II. Cultural Negotiations: 3. Unity and diversity in state rituals; 4. Kinship and succession in China, Japan and Korea; 5. Identity issues: the civilized/barbarian discourse; Conclusion; Epilogue: drawing boundaries in northeast Asia; Bibliography; Index.

'[Rawski] challenges the China-centered, uni-national approach with this exploration of how the states and cultures across Northeast Asia influenced China's history, culture, and identity in the early modern era. The author's earlier works on Qing China make her eminently suited to write this book. Rawski does not limit herself to the late imperial period, however, as she applies her analysis to contemporary China and, especially, its fraught relations with Japan and Korea. … Rawski's deployment of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean primary sources underlines her approach and should further the book's utility to readers interested in any or all of the three culture areas. … A unique work in its scope, sources, and argument. … Highly recommended.' M. C. Brose, Choice